An Australian Psychohistory Group

Early last year in Melbourne, Australia, nine people met formally for the first time to create a psychohistory discussion group. I will explain how this came about and report on our experiences.

Several years ago I approached a senior lecturer at La Trobe University, where I was and remain a student, to supervise a “free-reading” course so I could probe deeply the works of Freud and other eminent psychoanalysts. The lecturer, Richard Trahair, is himself a recruit to psychohistory and a presenter at International Psychohistorical Association conferences. He subsequently introduced me to some of Lloyd deMause’s theories.

In the ensuing years I have tutored and lectured in Dr. Trahair’s Psychoanalytic Studies course. Together with him, I have attempted to introduce some of the more enthusiastic and sophisticated students to the work of deMause. Interestingly, these students have without exception been “mature” both in age and experience. As a mature age student myself I could identify with the frustration many of them experienced in trying to find like-minded individuals with whom to explore these ideas openly and frankly. Having come to know most of them quite well, I approached them about starting a small discussion group to meet once a month, have dinner, and talk about psychohistory. We now meet on the first Wednesday evening of each month for about four hours.

Our early decisions included setting a limit to the size of the group of no more than 10 people,

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focusing on a chapter of deMause’s The Foundations of Psychohistory (1982) each month, and having one member of the group provide current materials, such as media reports of child abuse and cartoons demonstrating unconscious collective feelings toward political leaders, that support or refute the claims made by deMause.

This arrangement worked, but not without some uneasy moments. Most of us had long since read The Foundations of Psychohistory and a degree of tentativeness about the case studies did not always produce vigorous discussion. About the fourth month came the usual process of sorting out personalities: We stopped being on our best behavior, figured out who knew what about psychohistory, struggled to maintain our focus on the subject, and worked on some issues of leadership and group consensus.

After several anxious weeks, I discovered the unconscious desire of the group to have and sustain a “leader,” something I had been strongly resisting. My original intention in starting the group was to act as a facilitator for only a few months, providing suggestions for discussion papers and encouraging people to introduce their own research interests so that it would evolve into a more consensual group. I remain optimistic that this will happen as the group develops further. However, in response to the uncertainty and insecurity in the group that surfaced in the fourth month, I now select an article for discussion each month from the Journal of Psychohistory and write a short monthly newsletter. In the newsletter I remind everyone of the date of the next meeting, chat about what is happening on the Psychohistory List on the Internet, and pass on any information about new books and articles. The newsletter is posted to the members prior to the meeting.

To date we have discussed several important issues including Repressed Memory and the McMartin Tunnels; Eli Sagan’s analysis of the Paranoid Position; and Adowa Cycles. The McMartin Tunnels case in the U.S. is one in which children’s accounts of abuse at a preschool and the physical evidence that supported their claims were met with massive denial by those in authority. The vilification of therapists and the “scapegoating” of one concerned and vocal mother elicited much discussion. In Eli Sagan’s analysis of the Paranoid Position he posits that the extent to which individuals overcome the feeling of infantile paranoia greatly affects their capacity to manage non-rational impulses and moral anxiety as adults. Emerging from the paranoid position of infancy is dependent upon the ability to develop trust, both in the self and others. Sagan’s analysis proved illuminating for our understanding of the Heaven’s Gate suicides. Adowa Cycles are fifteen year cycles in which current socio-political phenomena, psychohistorically perceived as re-birth imagery, are seen to have their genesis in a traumatic event or events approximately 15 years previously.

In our discussion of recent Australian films, we concluded that a vast majority of them dealt with the theme of national identity — Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is the best example. We found the events that occurred in America just prior to the 1980s to be closely connected to an emerging “group fantasy” in Australia: the uncertainty of who we are and where we belong in the world; for example, the shadow of disgrace over Nixon’s resignation [1974] and the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. This was compounded by a severe recession here in Australia. However, our winning the 1983 America’s Cup in yachting had a profound effect on national pride: “little” Australia could upstage the mighty United States! While severe bush fires added to economic concern they also witnessed a resurgence of community support. It seems as if we were starting to feel capable of standing alone. At the same time, a new and charismatic prime minister was elected. Robert (Bob) Hawke exemplified the archetypal Australian, a bit of a larrikan [a rowdy], but a man with the intelligence and strength to “get the job done.” As Australia attempts to deal with severing the umbilical cord with mother England (we are in the difficult process of becoming a Republic) and to prove that it is able to stand alone without the constant approval of a paternal United States, we can be seen to be in an oedipal struggle to define our identity.

The monthly discussion is very lively. The members of the group are increasingly trusting of one another and, consequently, very relaxed. Six women and three men from various backgrounds, including academia, teaching, welfare, and psychology, make up our group. We have had one person leave due to work commitments and another person join two months ago. There have been two other expressions of interest in joining, but our group is reluctant to expand further. My personal preference is to provide a format in which guests may participate occasionally with a view to establishing other, similar groups themselves. To

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help new groups, as well as for our own historical record, I have maintained a file of our newsletters, discussion papers, and the reference materials that we have found profitable. There are open invitations to present to us extended to Norman Simms in New Zealand and Philip Dwyer, an Australian historian working to apply psychohistory to Napoleon and the French Revolution. Recently, Paul Elovitz and Henry Lawton in America have provided support which includes important resource materials. We have taken out a group subscription to Mentalities, and articles from that journal along with articles from Clio’s Psyche will be amongst our forthcoming discussion subjects.

We will soon hold a weekend mini-conference at which each member of the group will give a paper that applies psychohistorical theory to their research interests. Besides providing valuable intellectual experience, this time together will also strengthen our ties as developing psychohistorians and bring our work to a wider audience.

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